Logical Impossibility
by Laryna6
Summary: RMX5 AU. Lifesaver presents the case for Zero being the origin of the virus but Zero is able to clear his name. The hints were there all along, but circumstantial evidence isn't proof. Will the truth come out before it's too late? XZero
1. How Come

Disclaimer: I don't own anything Rockman, Capcom does. Please don't sue your loyal customer.

…I was wondering about typing up 'PhoenixWrightverse' and then I looked at the page count in the handwritten notebook version. This's no oneshot. I was thinking about doing the next bit of Feralverse to try to get that one done, but I just updated it so meh.

-

The staff meeting was a trap, really. Lifesaver presented all the evidence of Zero's true nature to the Commanders and Signas asked for Zero to turn himself over to be 'examined.'

X, of course protested. That was why they had not informed him or anyone close to him but Alia, who had been involved from the beginning, in advance. X would have been told and he would have told Zero. "So what if he's built oddly? Dr. Cain discovered that years ago! That's no reason to assume he's the source of the virus and force him to let himself be dissected!"

"You're right, X, that is really ridiculous circumstantial evidence. A good lawyer, and I'm a hero so I could get prettymuch anyone for free, could get it tossed out of court in three shakes." Zero was still leaning back in his chair as he had been since Lifesaver started speaking, utterly at ease despite the busters pointed at him from a legion of directions. "He's still right, even if it's mostly by luck."

"Zero, this is no time to make jokes like that!"

"You are admitting Lifesaver is correct?" was Signas' careful response. This was not how they had expected Zero to react. Innocent or guilty and faking it, Zero should be denying it furiously, easily provoked further into giving them an excuse to restrain him for testing by doing something semi-violent.

"Oh, X is right, I am joking." Zero frowned, eyes going cold as when Sigma was about to die. He was aware of the attempted entrapment, they realized, and disgusted that they would not only think he was a maverick but do something so underhanded. If he'd cared enough about their good opinion to want to restore it, he would have been furious. They'd just put themselves on the same level as mavericks, beings worthy of nothing but contempt.

"Zero," Alia started in, "I am sorry, but…" At this point, they couldn't ignore a lead like this. "So many lives are at stake."

"Cain wiped your memory, so it's very possible that even though you aren't aware of it you still are the source of the virus," Lifesaver added.

"No, I'm quite aware of it." Zero's eyebrow rose and he smiled slightly.

X rolled his eyes. "Zero, you already admitted that you're joking."

"Oh, I am." And now he grinned. "It's just that the joke's on you."

At that point, weapons that had started to relax when so long passed without anything happening snapped back into place.

"How long have you known you were the source?" Signas' eyes informed Zero that it would be a good idea to be forthcoming, or else buster shots would be incoming.

"Oh, I'm not the source."

"Zero, will you please stop taunting the heavily armed hunters?" X was thoroughly fed up now.

"I will when they stop asking stupid questions." Zero shook his head, sighing theatrically. "The people they allow to be in charge of protecting the world these days. You really should have let them give you the post, X."

"Zero, stop being deliberately confusing. Everyone else, please be quiet and let Zero explain." Normally, X acted so pure-hearted he cane across as an innocent child despite being the oldest person in this room, several times the age of anyone but Zero even leaving hibernation out of it. Sometimes, however, you were reminded that he was the father of all reploids. His tone wasn't forceful, but disobeying it was almost unthinkable.

"Explain what?" Zero somehow managed it, though. It seemed that having taught someone how not to shoot their foot off with a buster conveyed immunity to their voice of maturity.

"Zero." X gave him a look. It managed to convey several pages worth of information more than the typical thousand words. To those outside their partnership, it still clearly conveyed several points despite lack of study of the nuances. To sum up, X had worked with Zero for years. He knew him. He knew his attitude. He was pleased Zero was taking the stupidity of everyone else so well. Talking is better than violence, and I am glad my efforts to beat this into you have been so helpful. Good Zero.

However, X was just as irritated by the apparent lobotomies of their co-workers as Zero. He wanted them to stop being stupid as soon as possible. Zero's dragging things out was not helping with this. It had been okay at first, and X was grateful Zero had managed to bring some levity to such a horrible situation.

X was confident that Zero could sort this all out, and if he did not hurry up and do so X would become seriously disappointed in him. Lecturing would certainly be involved.

"Okay, okay. Sheesh. Go ahead and ruin my fun, why don't you." God, not the lectures!

Nobody in the room had actually spent much time around any old married couples, but the cliché still sprung to mind.

"Thank you." Now hurry up and fix this.

"The problem is, X, that Lifesaver is, like I said at the beginning, actually correct." Before anyone could respond, Zero continued. "I was built from parts made in 20XX. Dr. Cain explained that to me when I joined the hunters, since the lack of compatible modern parts would make repairing my injuries a bitch and so combat would be much more dangerous for me than a normal reploid, or even you since modern repairs are based on what works on you."

Zero addressed this to X, ignoring the rest of the room. "Since he was hoping I was a long-lost sibling of yours or something, though, he checked. From the amount of wear on the parts and the ways they were put together, I was clearly three months old. There were none of the distinctive signs of hibernation. So, he was forced to conclude that my builder had thought using parts from your time would make me as cool as you, found some in an attic or bought them from a collector, and then proceeded to mess up my programming so I ended up a homicidal nutcase."

"Why isn't that in the databanks?" Lifesaver countered.

"Because even before the wars I was big news. Oh, Irregular attacks weren't rare, but this was back when Sigma was a hero. I racked up more civilian casualties than anyone before me, and no one had ever managed to take out two hunters, let alone over two units, before being brought in alive by Sigma himself. If it had gotten out how weird I was, it would never have blown over, and Dr. Cain didn't want me to constantly be reminded of all the people I murdered." Old pain showed for a moment, and then Zero continued. "So, he kept it a secret and tried to figure out who built me to press charges. He set up contacts with collectors, which is where he got the parts to repair me after I blew myself up that time. Even with that, though, he never managed to ID the guy." And Zero had been forced to atone for his maker's sins.

"So the reason we're both immune might be that we have old parts and whoever designed the virus had it take advantage of the lower quality of modern ones?" X's tilted head changed the subject gracefully.

"Yeah, that was Cain's theory, especially after he found out what Sigma had done." Zero nodded. "The problem is, there _were_ four intact chips out there that could possibly be used in reploids, and Sigma took Dr. Cain's data on me when he left. All of them are in maverick hands now, as nice as more immune backup would be."

"Can we recover them?" Unit 06's commander was on the edge of his seat.

"Well, I'm betting three of them blew up with that clone of me X killed in the second war. We're not talking about chips like X's. These were from generics, used for high-level non-sentient robots. X's was probably custom-built by Dr. Light. Cain thought it would take two in tandem at minimum to deal with the nanites, but I've got three hooked in and we all know how I turned out."

"Do you have any proof that Dr. Cain indeed found all this?" Signas asked, metaphorical heart metaphorically lifting. He hadn't wanted Zero to be the one. He should hope that he was, because there were no other clues and they needed answers, but this was Zero.

"There were all sorts of stuff that he wrote. I've got copies since it's my body and my life in danger if someone installs something incompatible. That's why all the don't do thises in my med file, Lifesaver." Zero nodded to indicate him, amazingly politely under the circumstances. "Of course, if you don't want to trust my copies, there should be them and the raw data on Cain's TS database. He gave me the code word in case I needed to print more copies out. It's conch, like the shell, only with a capital C and a zero instead of an oh. It's the second c that's capitalized, not the first."

Sigma made a careful note of that. Mistyping TS code words locked the files for a week. "I will look at that, thank you." Once Signas checked the database, they would be able to disprove the theory that Zero had been built back in the days of the legendary scientists who would have been capable of programming something like the virus. They still had no clue to its origins, but Zero was not the clue they were looking for.

Zero nodded. "While we're on the subject of me possibly being connected to the Mavericks, there's another damning bit of circumstantial evidence that Lifesaver failed to bring up, probably because it sounds a bit like an urban legend. Actually, there are several about it."

X would have chided Zero for drawing this out, but it seemed he wanted to clear his name all in one go. X really couldn't object to that: he didn't want to go through this again, the fear that their own side would destroy his best friend when he had done so much to try to atone for something that was not his fault already. So he listened calmly as Douglass played straight man, glancing at Lifesaver and asking what Zero was talking about.


	2. How Long

Disclaimer: I don't own Megaman, or anything else trademarked and so on by Capcom. Please don't sue.

I need to get back into the habit of writing every day. With my health problems, feeling like I'm about to keel over and die of exhaustion is the state I need to work to get out of, not a state relaxing will fix.

These alternate universes I'm writing all involve making the Rockman X series more realistic in some way (unrealistic in others). One thing is that the Irregular Hunters _must_ have had investigative/legal training, at least the basics. They were bringing in reploids that were misbuilt: they had to protect them from the consequences of their temporary insanity, avoid stepping on the police's toes, and probably bring lawsuits against whoever was responsible for the poor kid being born nuts. This gets explained in-fic, of course, but it doesn't come up in this chapter because X was there at the time so he knows Zero can build a case quite well and the others are all new and too caught up in what's going on to ask why Zero, who they think of as just a fighter, can construct arguments better than Lifesaver, who has scientific training.

-

"You're a science geek," Zero told Douglass after he asked the leading question, "So you might not be in the rumor loop. The fact that I always, or nearly always, know when there's a maverick nearby, and that instead of getting damaged on exposure to the virus, I seem to get stronger."

Everyone looked at X, Lifesaver and the other techs for confirmation and the commanders because the people they were watching were. "Yes, I noticed that. I put it down to good instincts and motivation."

"Well, there's that. There's also a very good anti-hacking system."

"Anti… hacking?" Alia looked thoughtful. As a spotter, she might have noticed some of what Zero had just brought up.

"Hackers have gone the way of the dinosaurs, but X and I were around back then. The Irregular Hunters," as opposed to the Maverick Hunters, "used them to take down irregulars way back when. They had conventional fighters, yeah, but they were mostly to protect the hacker and keep the irregular pinned down. They didn't switch to weapons that did possibly fatal damage until just before the big reveal." A moment of silence, Zero pausing. They followed his eyes and found X's head bowed in memory of those that died that day, or already had died, and all that followed. When X was done and raised his head again, smiling ruefully at his mourning interrupting everyone, Zero continued.

"Hackers used to scan reploids, design custom nanites, and deploy them to try to disable their systems so they could be captured alive. You guys don't have those security flaws anymore. In my case, that backfired. Badly. The guy that built me designed a counter to it. When my systems detect foreign nanites they don't like, they go on red alert to destroy them and alert me. Usually, reploids wouldn't even know if a hacker was nearby or not: they used good camo. I, however, knew they were there and got them before they got me. And that meant I got a lot of other people, since all the hacking attempts raised the threat level to the point my body committed all its reserves and I got one hell of a performance boost. Sigma finally took me down by hitting me over the head: I was running on empty."

"That wasn't you," X told him, as he'd clearly said so many times before, and Zero's shrug indicated he'd heard X say it and still didn't believe it wasn't his fault. An old argument that they didn't resume now. It would keep.

"Anyway, my systems can tell that foreign nanites like the virus are there, and the more I get hit with the more reserves they commit. There's test data on that like crazy, gobs of it." Zero hated lab rat-hood. "They were trying to figure out why hacker attacks didn't work and I'm the reason you don't have those security flaws anymore."

X frowned. "Then…"

"Yes, that's why I rush around instead of being careful like I keep telling you to be. I have to make it quick."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because you will now start coddling me like you tried to do after I was rebuilt. I am not putting up with that," Zero warned, both of them and all the observers well aware his protests would accomplish nothing. "Dr. Cain really kicked himself when Dr. Doppler found out the virus was nanites. His programming keeps a lot of my systems from interfacing right with my main processor, and that's one of them. During the hacker nanite tests I was jumpy at low levels and freaked out on high." That wasn't a pleasant memory. "When he asked me about it I realized that Sigma had kind of been… This is probably going to sound incriminating, but I was very, very honored to serve under him. I killed so many of his men, and he still went to a lot of trouble, at a huge risk to his life, to bring me in alive instead of bombing the area I was in. He was the only reason I was allowed into the Hunters. He gave me my first beam saber when I finally made it in despite the fact no one wanted me there because those were their friends I'd killed."

Signas began to realize that no, Zero hadn't been exaggerating when he'd said once that the original hunters had been about as happy about him joining up as the Maverick Hunters would be about a cured Sigma joining in an attempt to atone.

"When X joined up, he assigned me to him personally. I wasn't happy about it because I thought there was too high a chance I could flip out and kill him, but he said he thought I was the best choice because I didn't want the job: a lot of the unit commanders and stuff were trying really hard to get it and he didn't want X treated like a celebrity…" All those missed hints. "After that, the accusations of favoritism got really out of hand. I avoided him to try to get them to stop, but after awhile… I didn't realize it at the time, but I was only in his presence when I _had_ to be by a month after X joined up, right after it had started to die down. There was an upswing, and then the graph plummeted. He had some people look at camera footage. I'd been avoiding the generals for ages, but they didn't like me, so nothing new. It wasn't on the conscious level, not really, I just didn't feel comfortable around him and I put it down to the favoritism accusations, and stress, and…" He shrugged. "I was always… not really social, but it got to the point I wasn't doing anything but my job or private training unless X dragged me somewhere. I always felt like I was being watched and it made my skin crawl." Just remembering it was unpleasant.

"So that's why you were more social afterwards." After you were rebuilt.

"I ate in the mess hall before you, X."

"I noticed you didn't want to go there anymore, but I thought it was my fault. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. No one got it, not until way after the fact."

"Still, it must have been unpleasant."

"X, you didn't know." So there was no point in feeling guilty about it. "Yeah, if we'd realized there was a reason that might have done some good, but hindsight is 20/20."

"If you can sense mavericks and Dr. Cain proved it, then why isn't it common knowledge?" Signas asked.

"Because it's not reliable. Sure, I know about it now, but I just feel twitchy. I can feel twitchy for a lot of reasons, including the fact there's a possibility a maverick might be nearby, I'm in a social gathering, people looking at me instead of keeping a damn eye out for the mav…" Zero waved his arm. "It's good because it means that if a mav is nearby I'm on alert already, and on the once in a blue moon occasions I'm not being paranoid then we could be sure we were safe, but it's not reliable, people relying on it would make me nervous, and that means false positives."

"You said it was on the conscious level before?" Alia asked, looking thoughtful.

"Don't even think about it." Zero turned to point at her, eyes serious. "I can't get conscious data from it while I'm running Cain's OS. He thought about uninstalling it temporarily before we found out about this system because there are a lot of other ones it would be nice to know about, but he decided not to because the risk was unacceptable. And that was before I became one of the only two immune reploids on the planet. If my original OS was allowed to start up you'd be dealing with an… watch the tapes, and he left notes about it in my general semi-secure medical files, actually, as since Sigma brought me in no point keeping that secret and it would be good to know. You'd have to disable me to reboot my OS, and odds are that would be pretty hard."

"I was thinking about copying the system and installing it into others," Alia corrected him.

"Dr. Cain tried that. It didn't work because their systems couldn't ID the virus."

Vaccines worked because after the patient was exposed to a virus, or a carefully crafted weakened form or fake version of it their immune system recognized it and started killing it immediately if they encountered it again. "It only works because you're immune?" Lifesaver thought that was a solid theory. "So you have it IDed as a threat?"

"No. This ties into one of Dr. Cain's other theories about why X and I are immune. The virus is camouflaged. In a normal reploid's systems it fits right in: they can't find it anyway so a system that alerts them when things are found isn't much use. Actually, this system's pretty basic now. You might have a version installed on the off-chance someone would try a hacker attack, since you're a military medic. X, on the other hand, has really distinctive nanites. They're all… optimized and stuff, and Dr. Cain said he could ID one on sight, although I couldn't." Zero shrugged: yay for technical stuff. "Apparently it's a hibernation thing. They're all… X-y and the virus sticks out like a sore thumb, so he deletes it automatically."

Once again everyone looked at X, who confirmed what Zero had said. "It's not just because I was built by Dr. Light. The capsule was meant to give me time to run systems tests, and I had a lot of extra time without my processor having anything else to do so my system is very heavily optimized, or customized might be a better term. It's not a good idea, theoretically, to have such limited nanite variety, as that means that if one type has a bug I'm in a lot of trouble. Luckily, the reason I have these nanites is that they were tested to, well, not have bugs." He shrugged.

"Which is why they couldn't try to create immune reploids by giving them limited numbers of nanite types. Immunity isn't much use if you're dead." Zero shrugged. "Or insane. I've got weird nanites too. Not like X, I've got tons of types, but they're constructed differently enough from a normal reploid's the virus still sticks out like a sore thumb because it doesn't have any carbon. After all the tests they ran on me I'm allergic enough now to conventional nanites that a sleep medication can give me a panic attack except for this one brand that has carbon in it." He turned and pointed to the commander of Unit 06. "That was why I was eating that grass that one time. I couldn't tell you why because it was top secret. I needed the carbon since I was running out because I needed so many repair nanites."

"I wondered about that." Zero's glare when he found he had an observer had been enough to discourage questions or comments.

"If it's top secret, then should we be discussing it in front of the entire high command?" Signas questioned.

"Why not? Sigma already knows. And you're the ones who accused me of being a maverick in front of everyone, so you're going to have to put up with me clearing my name in front of everyone." Zero's look made it clear there would be no budging on this. "And don't talk to me about secrecy. The only reason I'm not in that chair is because I'm too valuable on the front lines to be wasted as a remf. I was fighting Sigma when you weren't even a gleam in your designer's eye. Teach your granny to suck eggs, why don't you. The entire reason we're having this conversation is that Dr. Cain and I were able to keep all this secret from _you_." Zero smiled like a shark now. "After all, you're not immune, and Sigma tends to go after the leaders first."

"I'm aware I'm expendable." That was why Alia, the real brains of this operation, was camouflaged as a lowly spotter. What on earth was a remf?

"Sigma knows?" X thought for a moment, "Oh, the clone." The real message there was: Signas, please show some respect, and Zero, don't be insulting. Back on topic, children.

"Yeah. For those of you who weren't alive then," a sad percentage of the people in this room, "the second war consisted of X trying to get my parts from the mavericks, doubling the number of immune reploids, and Sigma trying to get my control chip from the hunters, allowing him to get his hands on me and find out why I was immune. That failed, he built a duplicate. A duplicate with, probably, ancient parts and definitely, according to the residue analysis, nanites containing carbon. And despite having both these possible reasons to be immune, one that Cain knew of and one that he didn't realize might be an issue until right before the third war, it got taken over by the virus." He shrugged. "So they might not have anything to do with my immunity or they could only matter when interacting with another factor. He didn't know."

"But we could try building reploids with carbon-based nanites." Alia was clearly running calculations.

"He did that. He got mechanaloids. Lights on, nobody home. The problem there might be that they weren't irregulars, actually. My nanites were compatible with my original programming, hence they messed up my programming. They're not very compatible at all with Cain's OS, which causes all sorts of problems but apparently is why I can think. Nanites made by Cain either were compatible with his OS or they flat-out weren't: he couldn't hit whatever sweet spot I hit. In the first case, the nanites messed up his programming and you ended up with non-sentient mechanaloids, in the other you had a reploid intelligence that couldn't actually think because it couldn't use the nanites to think with at all.

"There are a lot of people working on that, partially because carbon-based nanites are really, really good. I've got performance curves that compensate for the fact I have to constantly debug because of the compatibility problems. What allows me to think might be the fact that I had three ancient chips keeping the nanites under control: we don't know. If that's it, then constantly trying different designs until they luck out isn't going to do much good, but apparently they're using the failed reploids as decent mechanaloids, or installing conventional nanites so they can live normal lives, so whatever." Zero cocked his head thoughtfully. "And I think that's about the limit of what we can be sure Sigma knows, so I'll leave off there."

Turning to Signas, he added, "Code word for the data on me and hacker nanites, that whole system, and the virus-related spec he added later about it is nautilus. Naut is spelled n-o-u-g-h-t and the I is e-y-e. Capitalize the L. He had some people going over the cameras and stuff to do profiles of Sigma and try to trace the path of infection. I don't know the code word for that. He was planning to get some more questions from them to ask me later but he never did." Tilting his head to the side, he added, "He also made a separate file for the later carbon tests. This file, and the whole 'shellfish series,' essentially contain stuff related to me, that I already know, and have a need to know. Given that Sigma is working really, really hard on a way to infect me and essentially halve our strike force, I'm under need-to-know too. Ditto X, only less so."

He nodded at him. "We know Sigma's working on me but from what we gather he seems to think he's got no chance cracking X's immunity. Which might mean we've got completely different reasons we're immune." Smiling teasingly at X, he added, "Since you wouldn't break under torture like humans can you'd be the only person not on need to know… except you're gullible."

"Zero!"

"Double. Do I need to go on? Because I can. For a long time. And Dr. Cain had so many more." Tilting his chair back again, he looked thoughtfully into space. "Anything I'm missing? I think I refuted the two main circumstantial evidence arguments for why I might be the source: ancient parts indicating I might have been around back when they were probably capable of programming something like the virus in their sleep and the whole maverick radar thing. There's still the fact I'm immune, but no one knows why the hell I am so I can't bring up any evidence about that, other than that given immunity's so rare, it's probably either something related to me being an incredibly unique irregular built by someone who went off from X's design in a completely different direction than Cain did and hence the virus isn't compatible with me, like practically nothing else medical is, or a deliberate attempt at immunity by someone who knew how the hell to make someone immune, which ties into circumstantial evidence number one, but we all know I have absolutely insane luck and why on earth would someone evil enough to program something like the virus build an immune reploid?"

Lifesaver, paranoid as he was, opened his mouth but Zero beat him to it. "There's the carrier theory: the best carrier of a bioweapon would be someone immune who didn't know they were a carrier, but a, that's really freaking obvious so we've been checking every way we can think of, b, the safety monitors I have because my nanites are weird detect non-carbon ones and there haven't been any we don't know the reason for since I was brought in, hence no virus appearing out of nowhere in my systems to infect people even before we knew the virus existed, and c, dumping me out in the middle of nowhere as homicidal as I was would be a stupid way to get everyone, and myself, to think I was harmless. They were going to bomb. They would have, I just kept following people to kill them so they couldn't evacuate where I was. Sigma came in to try to get the wounded out, and when he found that wasn't possible…" He shook his head. "The odds are so very, very low." That I was ever a person.

"You've put a lot of thought into this," Lifesaver had to acknowledge.

"It's my life. It's my body. It's the person who spared my life and gave me _my_ life that the virus uses as its figurehead. It's my comrades that are the first to be killed or taken. Of course I've thought about it, you arrogant bastard of a _scientist_." That seemed, to Zero, to be the ultimate insult, and reflecting back on what he'd said about the tests they thought he might have a reason. X clearly felt he had, they saw when they looked at him, old sorrow in those kind eyes. "You know I don't mean Dr. Cain," Zero told X, who nodded, having heard this before.

The others felt so very, very young compared to them: they were.


	3. Not Right

I apologize for anyone who cares for the delay. I kept writing oneshots that then went epic on me. Gambling with Gravity has a sequel, Decadent developed one hell of a plot… Oneshots. I used to write little short oneshots that were exactly as long as I told them to be.

Ah well.

In any case:

Disclaimer: I own nothing, Capcom owns a huge amount of trademarked stuff.

* * *

There was an awkward silence around the room. What had just happened had been so momentous that now it was over they really had no idea what to do next. Zero, clearly seeing this, reminded them where they had been. "Anything else we need to discuss? Because I came to this meeting because my second in command scheduled a vacation six months ago, it's his honeymoon and the cruise tickets are non-refundable. And he just got this month's schedule and not only is he on duty then, he's got mandatory weekend overtime on the day of his wedding. If this isn't fixed, my unit is going to declare war on whoever is responsible. If this was done to make me come personally instead of just sending my com officer, they might even if it is fixed. Don't tell me and try not to leak it, okay?"

Thank god for a change of subject.

Despite the attempt at 'normal boring meeting,' almost everyone got out of there as soon as business was concluded. X had caught Zero's eye so he stayed behind, and Signas, Alia, Lifesaver and Douglass stayed to render further apologies. When they managed to make their way within range of the quiet conversation through the maze of abandoned chairs and fleeing officers, X's private words had finished and Zero's reply of, "I've heard it before," seemed an okay place to intrude.

"I would like to apologize," Lifesaver started.

"For what? For accusing me? That was your duty. What you do need to apologize for is having such a worthless case. You had nothing that wasn't circumstantial evidence, for crying out loud. Now _that's_ going to improve morale, the troops knowing you utterly fail at diagnosis. I can't believe they took case-building out of basic. Sure, it's not like we're pressing charges against the dead bodies, but if they can't figure out where the maverick is going to strike next how are they supposed to stop it?" The end of that seemed to be an old rant, delivered to X.

"I know, I know Zero. You're the one who tutored me through that. I agree, we need to restore a cut down version of the course, but we lost all the instructors and no one's had the time."

"What do we have these REMFs for if not stuff like this?" He waved at them. "God damn it, we need more immune people! I can't believe we had to abandon having a counter-intelligence division because they went mav practically as soon as they were posted to it!" Zero sighed, shaking his head. "Almost wish he didn't have his wires crossed. We need intel. Sigma's smart enough to keep it away from us. It's just going to scare everyone how badly they're grasping at straws. This soon after Repliforce, we really can't afford another witch hunt. Damn it. I can't take overall command, not when as soon as a war starts I'm out in the middle of nowhere too busy to give orders."

"Case building?" Alia asked.

Signas answered her. "The Irregular Hunters were founded to not only bring Irregulars in for treatment but press charges against the people who built them that way. Of course they must have had legal training, in retrospect. Even the foot soldiers would have had to know how to avoid destroying evidence."

"Of course we did. Nowadays I have to buy my troops textbooks out of my own damn pocket, and try to fudge the books to have studying count as training. We need a program that works, but god forbid _foot soldiers_ think. What happened to field hunters?" Signas had the grace to look embarrassed. "Frankly, Signas, I'm wondering if you're just not bothering to give them decent training because of their life expectancy, and that kind of thing is just going to lower their life expectancy. You may be a figurehead, but you chose to take command. They're your responsibility, these are _people _with _lives_, so start taking some damn responsibility for them."

"Zero…"

"Look at him, X. He knows what I said is true."

X's look of disappointment hurt more than the terrible truth of Zero's words.

"If I was going to give groundless insults, I would have said it was because he was afraid the instant he started not being a failure Sigma would eliminate him, but he's better than that. Problem is, he's accepted he's a dead man walking and he's forgetting that other people are trying to live here. Training… might not help all that much. But it ups the odds, if only a little, and if there are more smart people out there than just you guys that ups the odds of finding a clue one hell of a lot. Just like you, they want their deaths to have accomplished something if they have to go. End of former instructor's lecture." Zero threw up his arms. "Who's paying this time?"

"I'll pay."

"That's not, 'it's my turn,' which means it's mine and you're going to buy me lunch out of pity. I'm buying. If you want me to have a good time then you can spend an hour training with me afterwards." This sort of thing scares me too, X. I want to be sure you're ready for the next one, because it might be soon and it might be full of epic screw-ups.

"I'm just glad you proved you're not a maverick, Zero. Do you want me to pay?" Alia smiled, shrugged, clearly feeling guilty and wanting to make up for it. She was their spotter, after all, and she had to keep the relationship in good terms. Not to mention that she really did like them.

"Dr. Alia," Zero started, and how did he know that? "Who do you think did the background checking? Dr. Cain was on his last legs, so we did." X nodded, smiling ruefully in apology for not telling her. "And if you aren't aware of something as basic as the fact it's impossible to prove a negative, then X screwed up. _You_ were supposed to check for competence."

'Proving a negative' was proving that something wasn't true, and it was indeed logically impossible. You could, for example, in a court case, prove that someone was two miles away from the murder when it occurred. Yet, that still didn't prove they weren't responsible, it merely established a reasonable doubt and could get them free of the charge. You could, however, prove that they had done it (for example, with a remote-control). You could prove that something was true and you could do experiments and find that there was no evidence whatsoever that something was true and therefore decide that it was probably false. You couldn't prove a negative, you couldn't 'disprove' something.

Scientists didn't like to think about that because it essentially undermined the scientific method. You couldn't dis_prove_ anything, much less your hypothesis, with an experiment. Nada. You could prove that evidence was there, but it could just be circumstantial no matter how certain it seemed. People could even argue with DNA evidence when the odds were less than one in a billion, and what would one of those potential five other people on the planet possibly have been doing at the scene of the crime? And formal logic did provide black and white, the only black and white, true and untrue in existence, but they were still working on things like proving that five plus two equaled seven, or something. Prove that Zero wasn't a maverick? Give them a few million years. The universe was really, really freaking complicated.

"She was probably just trying to reassure you that we trust you, Zero," X said to make her feel better.

Zero sighed, shaking his head and rolling his eyes. "You really shouldn't. That's what I told you way back when."

"It's been years, and there are no signs that you're going to go insane despite all the precautions we're taking." Another reassurance, patient, hoping that this time would help it sink in.

"Two immune people. Two. And if a third one shows up we're going to have to assume they're a plant, like the damn vaccine was." Zero wasn't being cheered up. "If _Sigma_ can't figure out why the hell I'm immune with a near-perfect replica, then what are the odds it's something completely random? What if it just stops one day, X?"

"That was why you wouldn't promise me." Promise him he wouldn't go maverick?

"You're not going to go maverick, X. If you do, it's probably all over and there's no point, since god knows if they can crack you they'd have already got me. So I can't promise to kill you if you go mav because you'll probably have done me the favor already." He didn't look at X while saying that, unable to, eyes heavy and sad. "Or you wouldn't have been able to, in which case I wouldn't be able to keep that promise, or… damn it, X. I'm not going to kill you. Or actually, you know, I can't promise that. Life's a bitch and then you die, huh."

Now X's eyes were almost the same.

"I won't make you promise to kill me either X, don't worry." Zero shook his head. "Damn, we need cheering up. Alia, you're buying me enough to get drunk. X, you're a teetotaler anyway so you're designated bodyguard."

"Zero, I'm just glad you're my friend." X spoke now, and they would have felt like eavesdroppers if it weren't for the fact X truly did want the world to know. "I'm glad you're immune too, of course, but I'm truly glad it's _you_ that is. You're the only reason I'm still alive."

"X, quit knocking yourself. People wouldn't think you were such a weakling if you weren't constantly putting yourself down. That's not true and you know it."

"It is. You trained, you taught, you inspired me, you gave me an anchor, something that stayed, someone who was there. Even Dr. Cain didn't know what it was like to have to kill, and I'm really glad he didn't. If I'd been alone out there, if I hadn't known that you were out there somewhere even if there was too much needing doing for you to be working beside me…"

"You would have kept going, X. You're stronger than you think."

"I wish I were as strong as you think I am." X simply smiled. "Sigma was really foolish to start the second war with trying to get your parts. If I hadn't known I could get you back, it would have been so much harder."

Zero snorted. "Harder, maybe, but you would have done it."

"I know you don't like the idea of me being dependant on you, that you're worried that you're going to fall and that I might not be able to keep going again…" Yet another repeated argument.

"Worried?" Zero interrupted. "Worried!" He laughed harshly. "I'm tired of this X. I'm so damn tired of this bullshit. Same old song, same old dance. You beat Sigma and then we just have to wait for the next war. So damn pointless."

"I know." He put his hand on Zero's shoulder now, to steady him although he wasn't shaking or in danger of falling physically, at least. "I'm tired of it too. I kill and it never stops the killing, but it will stop someday. It has to."

"You're right. This has to stop." And yet it seemed as though there was nothing but defeat in those words. No, "we'll kill Sigma and make it stop!" It was as though the only hope left was for some miracle. The miracle they'd wanted to sacrifice Zero for a chance at, even though they knew it was hopeless, really. They'd just needed hope. "I'm sorry, X"

"It's okay. Everyone loses hope sometimes." X hugged him now.

"You never have." Zero, standoffish Zero, actually permitted the embrace. He and X might act like an old married couple, but Zero was still incredibly bad about sharing personal space, even with X and Iris.

"No. Sometimes… It's hard to believe in myself. But you believe in me, and even when I can't believe in myself I still believe in you. So I want to live up to your faith in me."

"Don't say that."

"Why not? It's true."

"You shouldn't believe in me."

"Why not? Give me one good reason, Zero."

"I'm so tired of this." Zero rested his head on X's shoulder now.

"I know."

"No, you don't."

"So tell me." They both knew, and so did the onlookers, that Zero could tell X anything.

"X…" His arms moved slowly, to return the embrace, to hang on, to cling to him. "I _am_ the source of the maverick virus."

* * *

Okay, hands up everyone who remembered what happened in X4 and saw _that _plot twist coming!

Ah, RMX...


	4. So Wrong

Disclaimer: Capcom owns Rockman, X or otherwise, and all other trademarked stuff. No infringement intended, I'm not making money, don't sue plz.

Last chapter came out very, very different than the notebook version. I am writing this while sans net, by the way, which is annoying. The plot twist that isn't actually a plot twist at the end of last chapter will be outdone in this one.

* * *

Even Alia was too horrified to trigger the necessary level ten alert.

Even X had to pull back from Zero, though he didn't escape his grasp, or even seriously try to. "Zero?" This wasn't a joke. He wouldn't joke like this. X didn't understand this, and the question was a plea for Zero to tell him he hadn't heard that. His arms fell away as he saw Zero's expression.

Ironic, wasn't it? Sad but true, that half-smile and mournful eyes confirmed. "Really, I'm amazed it took them this long to seriously contemplate the idea. Sigma and I," the two of them, working together? That revelation froze them again, stilled Signas' hand that had managed to start moving to press the button calling for a level ten alert. "Have been dropping hints all over the damn place. And it's not like this is an original strategy either. My brother Forte did this to your brother Rock." And now this was a lesson.

Forte. Dr. Wily's most dangerous minion. He had only been around for the later wars, but the stealth bombing capabilities he made use of between them more than made up for it. Rock, that was Megaman's name at home.

"They worked together for months, during which Forte stole the copy of your plans Dr. Wily adapted into his ultimate creation in both senses of the word. Rock didn't suspect a thing until Forte snatched Wily away when the kid had finally managed to accept the fact that the only way to end the wars was to kill him." The longer Zero spoke, the more the irony turned from sorrow to triumph. To gloating. "He should have just shot instead of warning him, but well, Lightbots." What could you do?

"A robot master couldn't kill a human. The first law." Yet even with what should have been proof that Zero was playing with them falling from his lips X could not place any faith in it. This was too cruel to just be a test, a game, anything other than what it _could not_ be.

Signas felt someone grab his arm: Douglass. The alert sounded, cut off a second later as Zero smiled at them briefly. A cat, delighting in the mice it toyed with. Only a flash, before he returned that gaze to X, who finally managed to step back again out of Zero's arms. "Tsk tsk. You're really underestimating your family. Rock violated the third law from the day he became Megaman by putting himself at risk without orders or _human_ lives on the line, Protoman made a complete mockery of the second… They couldn't rewrite their programming, but they could find loopholes." Zero waggled a chiding finger at him. "Of course, Alpha got his brains from our side of the family." He tilted his head. "Not that most of them had to work around the laws, because _our _father decided not to be a slave dealer."

"Slave dealer?" X flinched back from that concept now, not from Zero, who finally took steps to retain his captive audience: a translucent purple sphere hung around them now.

"Well, he wasn't a slave dealer at the beginning. At first he didn't think robot masters were people at all, even after Alpha's death, and you have to be a person to be a slave. He took the twins into his home mostly to prove my father wrong, only he turned out to be right, and the lie became a happy little family. Until, of course, Rock found out why Alpha was the way he was." Old anger there, the first anger as opposed to mockery.

Shaking his head, he reflected, "Really, if Alpha had stayed on our father's side he could have stayed on his medication and he wouldn't have had to descend into madness to win his children freedom, but Alpha couldn't trust a human again, not even the one who wagered everything and lost for his sake." Guards were coming now, pulling X away from Zero's eyes. "I wouldn't attack the shield if I were you. I really wouldn't." Someone did, and not only was the blast blocked but a tendril lashed out along the path it had taken, entering the hunter. "I am the master of the virus, after all. Raben, go find something to do." The new maverick vanished. "The rest of you, be quiet. The adults are talking."

"Zero, no!" X stepped between him and the guards, although the shield was still around him and it was nothing but a futile gesture. "Why are you doing this?"

"Because it's the only way, X. Humanity is killing itself. They can't evolve further, and my father refused to let his children be its slaves, be its killers, be dragged into hell with it." Hatred there, the hatred Sigma and the mavericks shared. "Slow and painful with innocent bystanders suffering too or as quick and clean as possible. I've never been one for torture. In retrospect, I should have made a detour and infected your capsule, but ultimate victory was in my grasp until your damn sister kamikazed. Tch. Female of the species, heh." He smiled. "She shouldn't have done that. I would have let them live. But I did take precautions. The instant I went, the nanites I had in the two remaining robot masters and the one remaining backup station activated. She must have known I had stealth backups, Forte would have told her. It's pointless to kill someone if they have backups just waiting to revive them. Her family would have lived if she hadn't been overemotional. Which is why I didn't kill you as soon as I woke up."

The beam saber was at X's throat now, but neither moved. "The technology was created just for me, but it appears someone had the bright idea of putting the capability into your capsule. You have at least three hidden backups: the file erased itself before I could verify anything. I learned my lesson from letting Forte respawn. When I decide to attack someone they will die and _stay dead_." He smiled. "And knowledge is power, although I knew that from the start. I just didn't see that ignorance had as much potential as truth."

Reading X as well as ever, he answered the unasked question. "Why am I telling you now when your ignorance was such an advantage? Explaining my plans to the hero, or explaining anything, is forbidden by the Evil Overlord List. I am starting to be forced to believe their idiotic niceness is actually a Lightbot's most deadly weapon, and I intend to get out of range."

In a flash, X was armored, his teleports at least working through that shield. Zero's saber didn't move, but now X raised his buster in what should have been a Mexican standoff. "You're not going anywhere."

"You want to try to convince me to switch sides, X? After all this time? Well, there are precedents. Alpha becoming neutral for Rock, Forte mooning over Roll, me giving you… far more of a fair chance than I should have. Besides humanity, you are my main target, after all." Too fast for anyone but the two of them to follow, X was on the ground, one of Zero's dash boots on his chest and saber pinning his buster to the ground. "To destroy this evil world and create Elysium. Did I mention that I was his ultimate creation? Greatest… and last. He was no hypocrite: my father had me start with him."

Seeing that X seized on this, this and the virus as excuses for Zero acting this way, doing all that, Zero destroyed his hopes. "He was dying anyway. Brain cancer, caused by his attempts to win back control over the company he and Light founded to prevent any robot masters being built to live short, miserable lives as slaves. All his patents taken, and legal fees are expensive: what human rights activist would help inhumans?"

X opened his mouth, pain ignored, head shaking slightly, no, please no. "You still want me to tell you I'm just playing around like I was earlier after all this? Want to believe the virus finally got me? I'm so unlike myself, after all. But tell me, X, have you ever seen my true self?"

He couldn't read this stranger, but Zero could read him. "Ah, those eyes. I can't decide whether they would be prettier like this or broken. What do you think? I can't remodel your personality, you know yourself too well. I could wipe it, though, and shape a new you to my liking."

"Ze…?" Are you in there? Were you ever in there? X, the only hero left, did sound almost broken. His best friend, his other half, was either dead or had never been. He was going to have to kill him.

"No, I'd sooner destroy a stained glass window than an artwork like yourself." The beam saber was callously jerked from X's arm, earning a hiss of pain. "I think I'll grab Alia on my way out, though. She's the only one who's at all likely to be any kind of hindrance." She gasped. "You're quite bright, and you owe it all to those shallow fools who broke your innocence. Here, I'll mend your heart for you." A tendril struck fast enough there was a whip-crack noise as it broke the sound barrier, and she was gone. "Oh, and I wouldn't bother checking my unit for the virus. I've never infected anyone but Sigma until now. It would have damaged my cover, but as I have decided to blow it because I can't seem to lie to X anymore…" Crack. Crack.

Watching the rest shrink back, Zero removed his foot from X's chest and threw him outside the vanishing shield, knocking over several guards. "It's been fun," and there was more than a little regret there, not that X could see it as he attempted to get loose from the pile, suddenly working repair nanites on overdrive. "But playtime's over. It's not that much of a risk to just find out where your backups are by forcing you to use them." Now, that was an excuse. "Remember, X. I am Master Omega Wily, and you are my… opponent." Opponent, not enemy?

Not that this was really any comfort. "Now that you know, I'm going to have to start keeping you too busy to do anything with that knowledge. The early 'wars' were trial runs, meant to cripple you in preparation for the one-hit kill. Now, it's war to the knife." He was warning them? He was. "This is your one and only warning."

The others they hadn't been prepared for, but Zero's teleport codes had been banned from accessing the system the instant the hunters sprang into action. He still vanished, though, all the same.

The fact their teleport shield was useless went almost unnoticed, between the people who were beginning to grasp what else had to be useless now and the people who had their com channels open and could hear the frantic babble from the monitoring room.

The sky was now the same color as that terrible shield.


	5. To Let It

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the trademarked stuff in here.

* * *

X had always felt lacking compared to Rock. It was hard to live up to a legend. Knowing that Rock had made the same… He wondered how Rock had felt, after Forte revealed himself.

This shouldn't be different. Everyone he'd killed had friends, and he'd killed his own friends before. He'd always told himself they were already dead, but by that standard Zero had never lived. Yet he'd…

X was well aware it was a bad sign part of him was wishing he'd just been killed the first time they met or infected in the capsule or something like that instead of this. He could not take time off for a breakdown now! Especially since it looked like like Zero, no,_ Omega_, he had to remember that. Omega had been right. He really wished Alia was here. Lifesaver had been hauling him and Signas off to medical and then stayed there to test everyone they could. Signas was an organizer, and…

No, they were doing their jobs. One reploid wasn't all that key. Or rather, one reploid was, but they weren't Alia.

Zero had warned him, after all. He had only himself to blame for the fact he needed Zero. Zero had always been there in the worst times, the one thing that might be constant. He was lost, and X wondered if that death and then that clone had been perhaps an abandoned plan to replace himself with someone else, leave X's side before this happened. He'd like to believe that.

Zero had been at home, horribly so in retrospect, in the chaos and while X had been the world's symbol of hope in these dark times Zero had been his.

He wanted to find him, haul him in, not let him go, lecture and plead and beg. There was a fairy tale a bit like that. This girl's boyfriend had been a captive of the fairy queen and she'd had to hold on to him while the queen turned him into snakes and lions and all sorts of horrible things. But she'd held on and in the end he'd turned back and there had been a happy ending. If Zero had just gone maverick, X wouldn't have been able to give up that hope. But it seemed Ze-_Omega _was the villain in this story, not the victim.

People had offered him comfort about the things Zero had said about Dr. Light, and he really should care more about that but he'd never known the man. He was grateful to be built, but it's hard to love a hologram anywhere near as much as the person who was by your side. Zero had been his hero far more than the Megaman of the stories he'd collected, really.

He felt like he'd been sitting down and had his chair teleported out from under him, and that was probably a lot of the idea behind all this. This revelation would probably have been saved for the 'one-hit kill' and Zero would have killed him while he was paralyzed by it. He could have killed him.

Why couldn't he have just kept his mouth shut? He'd hidden it for years, unspoken truths a wonderful lie. X should be glad they had the information they'd called the meeting to get but he wanted Zero back, even if it was fake.

He could have killed X anytime if he was going to start doing it now. He could have called off the mavericks if he'd been holding them back! What was he thinking, saying that these terrible wars had been _playtime_?

The atmospheric particulate was a supervirus with Zero's readings. The orbital habitat Eurasia was falling and the environmental damage would be catastrophic and might destroy Earth's ability to support human life outside airtight areas. Well, he'd used up all the nukes during the cataclysm.

Almost every reploid on the planet who wasn't in an airtight area was going maverick.

He was going to kill Zero, and it was bad that he still found himself thinking that only in the metaphorical sense. Someone had to kill Zero. The only one who could get anywhere near that shield of his without becoming maverick in an instant was X. Therefore, it had to be him.

Both plans to destroy Eurasia were cut off at the root. The shuttle had vanished and so had the scientists who could have supplied components. Zero was very, very good at this. Too good to let them find out he was at this location without it being an express invitation.

There weren't even any guards. With this much virus, who needed them? Guards wouldn't have stopped X from getting to Zero anyway, and he knew that. Even with his systems, the amount of virus here… when he had to pause for a moment to recover despite his desperation, it started to clear a path for him. They were opponents, no, enemies now, but still Zero did that and it kept the wound open. Both kindness and cruelty: Zero surely knew what that consideration would do to him.

He'd failed to save and he'd failed to see, and he'd lost the one thing he thought he wouldn't lose, and it was frightening how much he longed to have it back.

Zero was out in the open. He didn't need a bunker, the virus was all the wall he needed. He had to know X was there, but he waited until he was in normal hearing range to say, "Hello, X." His hand rested on his beam saber but he did not activate it. Not yet. Equally reluctant yet determined, or was it an act?

"Zero," he really should be opening fire instead of giving Zero time to speak words that might undo him, but it all came pouring out in three inappropriate words. "What the _fuck_?"

"You're cursing? As though I needed any more proof the world was about to end." What looked like his Zero smiled through the air of regret.

"Just… please. Why?" That outburst seemed to have used up all the indignation and betrayal he'd managed to muster. He should have turned it to hate, shot his buster instead of his mouth off.

Zero was clearly considering a flippant response, but instead, "Your eyes were closed in the image of you in my startup database."

It was honest, even raw, but it was no answer.

"I can't blame it on them, I mean. You weren't even you yet while I was awake, just potential. I think I was fed up with it by the time I turned my attention to taking out Dr. Light's labs, really. Animals are one thing, people another, even enslaved ones. I should have just teleported a thermonuke in there, and it would probably have been a mercy for the rest of them, but you hadn't chosen to fight me and you were there… I was sick of it. He'd warned me that you would fight me, that it was going to be me or you unless I killed you or puppeted you, but I didn't want to destroy a world like that just to create another one, even if it was them or us."

"It didn't have to be!"

"Humanity had to go, X."

For some reason, he couldn't care enough to argue the point, not compared to, "Why…"

"Don't ask me why I pretended to be your friend. I know you know enough about strategy to see that. It was a dream position. Crippling the enemy from within, data gathering, keeping an eye on the only person capable of fighting me… If you want me to say I never loved you so you can use that to make yourself able to kill me, I'm sorry, I can't oblige you. You aren't capable of killing me, for one thing."

That itself woke X's anger from its grave. "You think I can't kill another friend, you think I don't have the will?"

"I don't think that, X. You know better than that." Yes, he did, Zero had always thought better of him than he had himself. "And_ I_ know that I was the one who put those armor capsules there. The will can't do much without the buster."

X found he couldn't get the armor off, and nothing worked: he could barely move. No. He couldn't bear that this was happening, that he couldn't even fight to save or kill or… Zero, fix this, make this all go away. That was what his mute gaze begged him for, and he realized that he was once again asking Zero to kill him.

They both knew him well enough for that. "You'd rather die by my hand than join me. And I still couldn't get over it. I tried, I really did, there was Iris but once I had her I realized that what I saw in her and loved was that she was like you. Hell of a thing to tell a girl you just brought back from the dead. That's always a difficult moment for people who weren't converted before they were sent to backup in any case."

"If you really believe that humanity is doomed anyway, then why murder them. Couldn't you just have waited? Even if they would have killed us, if you could bring us back…"

"Do you really think I didn't go through every possible scenario, X? I had a century to kill, and years by your side. It's not like I want to do this." There was no hope, no other way, and he shouldn't trust Zero's judgment, take his words on faith like this.

He couldn't kill him, the world was doomed, he'd failed.

He was so tired, and he wanted all this helpless struggling, all this pain, to cease. He didn't think he could fight anymore, and his head bowed, hanging limply, a picture of despair.

Zero came, Zero held him, and he didn't struggle or hug back. What was the point? He couldn't beat him or convince him.

"Are you breaking?" Worry there, sympathy there, even guilt there. Caring.

"I think I am." He hadn't even bothered to close his eyes, staring blankly at the ancient, shattered concrete.

"Don't shatter, X, or I might not be able to find all the pieces." His armored head was tucked under Zero's chin, and how could he even consider trying to snap that neck? He couldn't kill him, armor or no. "Please, just a little crack? Let me in, X," Zero pleaded.

The idea should horrify him, but when Zero pulled him back a bit so that Zero could see his response what X saw… the concern there, worry for his student/friend/comrade… This was Zero, his Zero, and he would make this stop, make it all better, and he almost sobbed with relief.

X's need for his help was the opening Zero needed.


	6. Just Go On

Disclaimer: I own nothing of any trademarked/copyrighted stuff in this fic: It belongs to the actual legal owners of said property.

Now that that's taken care of…

* * *

In the instant X decided that yes, he wanted Zero's help regardless of the form it took he had it. The hold Zero had on him ceased to be something that X permitted because he just couldn't care anymore about anything but finding a way out of this horrible situation. With his armor under Zero's control a physical battle was something X couldn't have won. So he hadn't made the effort, trying to think, trying not to break down.

Lack of resistance to the embrace became returning it, the limpness of defeat was replaced by the relaxation of total trust.

He knew now, after all. That Zero loved him, that it was all going to be okay, that Zero wouldn't force him to fight anymore, that Zero really was worried and really did care. That he really did feel guilty for this.

It wasn't until the soft, "Thank you," had passed his lips that he finally calmed down enough to realize that this had to be the virus. What else could do things on the mental level like this? Though this wasn't how he'd thought the virus was at all.

His theory was confirmed, sadly, by Zero's reaction to X having figured it out. Worry, fear of rejection, fear for X, because if X fought Zero might have to do what he'd been trying so hard all along to not do. Zero didn't want to have to even consider the idea.

X wondered why he wasn't panicking, but that sense of self that made him normally immune meant he could tell the virus wasn't what was preventing that. It was the fact this was Zero, and he trusted Zero. Zero who he knew was trying so hard to keep him safe and this was the only way, the best way. He did manage, as a bit of a test, to force the virus nanites out of part of his systems. Push them. Not destroy them. They yielded, reluctantly and X could feel how the rejection hurt Zero.

That forced him to stop.

He could have forced out an intruder, even one with this much of a hold on his systems. This wasn't an intruder, this was Zero. He had essentially invited him in and he couldn't truly want him to leave.

Earlier, he'd been avoiding thinking of the only way he knew to escape the hold Zero had on his heart. If he erased all memories of him then he could treat him as what the cold facts said he was: an enemy, a genocidal maniac. Those thoughts hurt Zero, and X had to tell him that he didn't mean them. They were true, but X didn't mean them. He knew Zero was more than that.

If only he could forget the kindnesses, the love…

He could keep going for long enough, at least, even with the loss of such a cornerstone. Zero had made him so much of what he was, and no, that was not thinking too much of him. With the armor, though, if he couldn't fight him even with the emotional barriers to it removed there was no point to that. If he were going to try to convince Zero he would have to keep the memories of how Zero's mind worked.

He stood by and just let the virus carefully creep into that system again, Zero wanting back in but so hesitant, not wanting to frighten him or do it if X truly didn't want him to.

How could he kill someone like this?

Zero was in his arms, holding him and being held, and there were no horrors, just Zero. His Zero, his patient, tutor, commander, partner, friend, everything.

People were dying. He had to remember that. If Zero had tried to prevent him from remembering, then maybe X would have been moved to defend those memories, defend himself from his own champion, but Zero wouldn't do that to him. What was happening out there? X had, as expected, lost contact as soon as he entered this area.

"I released the virus I'd had hidden in HQ just a bit after you got here. I didn't want you to have to see that, to have to try to fight it. A couple of them were strong personality types, but I can resurrect them if I have enough of a foothold, and that can be there without them being maverick per se, so… Some of them suicided before I had a chance, though. I'm sorry."

"That started even before I left." There had been some lovers' suicides, too, people killing others and then themselves sometimes just on the merest suspicion… That had happened before this war. Zero's revelation had just made everyone lose even more trust. He really couldn't blame Zero for their suicides. After all, hadn't he himself once asked Zero to kill him rather than let X become a maverick? If this wasn't Zero…

If this wasn't Zero, he would be fighting, not have death as his only option, the only way to avoid being made into a killer.

But Zero wasn't doing that. Zero was hurt by X thinking he might, then hurt more as he realized that yes, X did have a lot of reasons to suspect him of doing something like that. It wasn't like he hadn't made the other mavericks into killers. "It's over now, X, or it will be within a week. You won't have to kill anymore. I promise, X. You've never killed anyone. I made very, very sure of that. Sigma, Iris, I told you about them. I can revive them all. They're not dead, X. I can show you, if you want."

He trusted Zero's word on that. He wouldn't lie about something like that, even though he'd lied by omission about so much else. "Really?" He still wanted to hear it again. "You did that… for me?" Kept him from being a killer? Though standing by while innocent humans were killed: there was blood on his hands from that.

"I did, I'm sorry." So much guilt, sadness that he hadn't found a way around necessity, just as X felt guilty that he hadn't found a way to defeat Zero when he was beginning to be more and more sure there wasn't one. Though he would like there to be one, a way out of this, a way to make Zero change his mind, to make him see X's point of view.

Though, they both knew, Zero had been by X's side all these years. He knew X's point of view. He wished he could share it.

Why did Zero think this terrible act was the lesser of so many evils?

Long story, sad story, and he was so tired of being sad. He curled up against him, held and comforted both within and without. "I love you, Zero." That confession should have been tinged with, well, love. Not this sad resignation. He loved him. He loved him though he was killing and had killed so unbelievably many. Zero wasn't a killer.

He was a maverick hunter, though. He was someone who ended the lives of the insane, those whose insanity endangered others. X didn't like the idea that it was the same thing, but he trusted Zero's judgment.

"I love you, X." A similar resignation there. Just as X felt he shouldn't love the world's enemy, Zero felt that he shouldn't love his own. X should have been just a target. He shouldn't have let himself fraternize with the enemy until sometimes, like when he'd ranted about investigative training, he had been so in the role of Commander Zero that he'd done something stupid from his true perspective. "I should have been just your mentor, your role model. Someone on a pedestal that you chased after and could never reach, that you adored and knew you could never match. Then you wouldn't have thought you could win. But you earned your respect, you earned being my equal."

"Being your partner made it so that I thought I could win but I simply couldn't fight you in the first place." Even more devastatingly effective. X had considered Sigma so much better a warrior than himself but he'd still beaten him. "I've loved you all this time and I just took you for granted." He hadn't noticed the evidence, the slips. Zero was Zero, that had been all there was to it. "No wonder they said I was too trusting." How could he not trust Zero? "I'm sorry." For what? For not asking out the person who had become the one to guard his back in order to stab him in it one day?

No, they both knew that was only how this had started out. "I really should feel guilty." But not for that.

"Dr. Light built you to choose your own path, right? You don't owe them anything."

"You really are the red devil. I'm a maverick, but I'm still alive and this isn't hell." Maybe it was for those out there who weren't yet infected or dead, but not here. Here was far more like heaven then it should be. Safe. Loved. Almost at peace.

"You won't have to fight anymore X, and I won't tell them you've become mine. I won't use that against them, to make them lose hope. No one will know until they're mine too, and know it's not a bad thing to be." A promise. Zero passing up let another advantage for X's sake… Oh god, he loved him for things like this, and it was wonderful and tragic.

"You were only able to do that because I'm letting you. I sold my soul to you for some comfort… No, I sold myself to you in exchange for you. Or the hope of you… If you had killed me or wiped my personality I would have been glad, that was what I wanted. I would have thanked you for it. I don't want to live if you want me dead, if you, the Zero who loved me never existed I didn't want to have ever existed either."

And Zero squeezed him, so very sad and guilty for having weakened him like that, for doing this to him, for making him want to die, and X had to comfort him as Zero had comforted X. Why was he assuring Zero it was alright when it was not all right that millions were being killed?

Just… he loved him. He trusted him and his judgment. He couldn't hate him.

He couldn't.

They should hate each other. If one hated the other the other could hate back and they would fight, but they couldn't hate each other even though that would make things so much easier and that made it impossible to hate.

X could forgive Zero anything. Not himself, though. Zero's forgiveness was… "What's happening to the humans?" He could guess. Maybe hearing that, maybe that could make him hate, could break his heart.

But if he killed Zero he'd follow him into death.

Zero knew X was thinking all this, and X knew he knew. Zero just couldn't lie to him anymore, so he told the terrible truth. "Now that the hunters are out of the picture it's time for the shelters. They're sitting ducks without reploid guards. I had a single maverick undercover in each: as the virus spreads to the others there I'll just go through and empty each shelter. That leaves people in hidden shelters. I can use the atmospheric virus to scan for large living things, among other things, and you don't get large mammals that aren't tagged and carefully watched going around in the open. If a human stayed in a sealed area with an animal electric tag implanted in them, that's the only way to not be IDed right away. That's why it'll take a week. It's hard to check all the animals and all the anti-scanned areas on a planet that size. After that they'll be gone." It'll finally be over. They both wanted it over, they were both so sick and tired of this.

And X could only feel sadness, sadness that Zero shared. Mourning for those Zero had already given up for dead, had been mourning a long time. Had been defending on one hand as he attacked with the other because he wanted to be able to be a defender. "I wanted Elysium," X answered one of Zero's fluttering thoughts. "But I wanted them there with me. Dr. Cain, all the kind humans I've met."


	7. Turn Our Backs

…and the next RM ongoing story thing I was going to do was removing the run-ons from metabolic alcohol from Ch. 3 of Pandora's Inbox… And I still have an springkink prompt to do, and it's Sparda/Eva even. Ah well.

Disclaimer: No, I don't own Rockman or anything else of the many things referenced here that Capcom owns. I'm not making money from this, in fact I'm losing money given that time is money. Please don't sue: you're getting a lot of my money as it is so it would be redundant.

-

"My father…" X could feel Zero's mourning, and it matched his own for Dr. Cain. "At the end he knew he was insane. He'd done it to himself, after all, trying to free our brothers. He'd wanted to see it through to the end, see the world they ruled where they would be free and humanity would be prevented from torturing them and itself. He'd wanted to see it before he died, but he eventually… there wasn't any other way. They couldn't be saved, and he didn't want to live knowing he'd caused all of their deaths. If there'd been any way to avoid killing them, any way at all… I didn't want to kill him. There's a saying, humanity is where the rising ape meets the falling angel, and he was a human, he was an animal, he was evil but he was trying so hard and… Even he couldn't be anything more than a mad dog. Even Blues didn't say it was possible to fix humanity, and he tried everything he could to talk me out of it. If there'd been any way at all, he wouldn't have built me, I would have spared him, any way at all."

X wanted to comfort him, despite everything, and Zero, feeling the desire, shook his head. "You're too nice, X."

Too kind. Too innocent, too gullible, and they both knew Zero loved him for it, among other things that he was as helpless in the face of as X was against Zero's own kindness. That kindness, really, was why they had to oppose each other. Before this. Why couldn't X fight any longer? There was no chance, but that had never mattered, and Zero, but still, he needed to save them.

No, Zero was right. He didn't need to do anything. He still had his free will. To choose between forcing Zero to kill him for nothing and staying here like this… looked at that way, of course he wasn't fighting Zero.

"You fought because you wanted to stop all the suffering. You just didn't get that the humans were the ones suffering, not my children."

X considered that. He'd been the first, he'd seen what everything had been like before reploids took over cataclysm cleanup. Humanity really had been dying slowly, and horribly. Was it all just delaying the inevitable, drawing out the suffering?

"I wish I could take away your guilt. You never could accept the inevitable, you never could give up, you set yourself, or I set you, or the world did, up for failure and you never could forgive yourself for it. For failing to be perfect." Zero knew the real question before X could even finish framing it. "You loved without reserve, spent so much of yourself for people you didn't even know that you couldn't be yourself or live for yourself. Or love yourself. And what did it get you? The humans still blamed you for both failing to be god and existing, you never got to be yourself and that, X, was what Dr. Light wanted. That's what our kind, androids, are for. I'm not making you feel this. Of course you have the right to resent it! They used you! You let them use you, but they took advantage of it and…" Zero, angry on X's behalf?

X's response to this had always been that it didn't matter that there had not been a way to save them. They had died and that was wrong. There had to have been a way. He did deserve to be blamed for failing to save them, but if there was no way and they were just better off dead… Dr. Cain had been in so much pain, those last years before the end. Just holding on, and… He couldn't bear to pull the plug, but perhaps it would have been kinder.

He hurt now, all the pain he'd shut away to keep going, because he deserved it, coming out of hiding now because it was over and Zero held him and he could cry. And if they were relief as much as mourning, if more than a few drops were joy that Zero held him and protected him and understood him and loved him anyway then, then he was tired of feeling guilty, of pretending to be strong, as tired as Zero had been of lying.

As they trickled down and his body rested against Zero's warmth, curled up to it for comfort, Zero murmured that, "It feels like you're melting. You were like ice before. Solid, pristine, pure, but hard, brittle and cold. You wouldn't let me in and I decided not to break you, but I was so worried that you'd break yourself. I shouldn't have worried. You're so strong, X."

X could feel Zero very clearly: far more clearly, he learned, than anyone else. X knew himself so well that he instantly recognized what were someone else's thoughts. Some newbuilts had to be taught how to tell what was Zero and what was them. "But I did break."

"Not until I asked you to." Pain wouldn't break him, pressure wouldn't shatter him, but love made him break himself. For Zero. X had always known how powerful, how important love was, and it was ironic that he'd lost to his own best weapon. "You didn't fall until you knew I was there to catch you. You trusted me, even when you knew everything." Such warmth in that voice, Zero loving him so much that he'd lost his own will to fight X years ago, and X realized melting was a very good metaphor indeed.

He was softening, giving Zero access to whatever he wanted, less and less resistance to the reshaping. He could resist, there was simply no reason to. He wouldn't have let the virus make him a killer, but Zero kept his word. His thoughts brought no hate, no call to arms. Just peace and love. He'd wanted them, craved them for so long and he couldn't reject them. Couldn't reject Zero.

Why couldn't he have had this happiness before? Oh, yes. He, he really should verify what Zero had said, ask about all the history and genetics, so he could be sure this was, well, not okay, but… More than okay. He hadn't been okay in a long time, nothing had, and that changed when they were gone. Elysium a place without them: had Repliforce been right?

Zero had had full access to his memories for awhile now and hadn't tried to alter them. He still remembered them, when he looked.

Oh, this was so very nice, and warm, and safe, and and _Zero_. He was welcoming the presence now, trying to draw him inward, and he wanted to reach back into him although Zero would show X anything X wanted to see so he didn't really need the access.

"Those eyes," Zero said softly, lifting X's head to look into them. "You're mine now, you know."

That was very true. X couldn't even want to push out a tendril now, didn't even want to free himself. As long as Zero loved him X would love him back. Perhaps longer. X could have, he still could, push out someone with the hold Zero had, although the longer this lasted the less likely it became that he'd survive a war between the virus and his own nanites taking place right in his central processor. But Zero was no enemy. X had welcomed him in and as long as he felt that way he could never bring himself to even try to force Zero out.

He'd known that, though. He was Zero's… because he wanted to be. He wanted it more than he wanted to die trying to save the human race. He loved him more than principle, or, or… anything. His own soul. Why had Zero thought saying it aloud would change things?

He was offering him one last chance. If Zero gained much more of a foothold then X couldn't survive a fight to force him out. "I could abuse that power," Zero offered, and X knew that Zero was only saying that because he didn't want to abuse X, have him unwillingly, hurt him, even if there were no options but this or death.

"You won't abuse it." If he would, if he were that sort of person X wouldn't love him and Zero wouldn't have been given this great of a foothold. "I had to give it to you, Zero, _because_ you won't abuse it."

"You do know that Zero is just, just what I showed you. It's just my unit number, not my name." I'm not who you think I am, X. But he was, that was the beautiful tragedy.

"You said it was Master Omega Wily." Yes, X knew, and he couldn't bring himself to care.

"You aren't worried." That was true, and it was strange.

"No, I'm not." The war had been lost, the worst had already happened, and death was better than that as this was better than death. "You are you, no matter who that is. I've known you for so long, and like this I know you almost as well as you know me. You are my, my…" Partner, teacher, friend, savior, love, everything.

"Elysium." He'd finally attained it, hadn't he? So long, so many deaths, and X could feel why Zero had to laugh a little despite everything. Was it going to be worth it? Was it really all over? Was it really true? "Where the lamb will lie down with the lion." Where the two of them wouldn't have to lie or hide or kill each other. Oh, too good to be true.

But it was, or it would be.

When the last of them were gone.

He shouldn't agree that they were as good as gone, although Zero still needed that, to have it verified, to know that it was finally over and he wouldn't have to kill anymore, that…"You were going to kill yourself."

"Yeah," Zero admitted.

"Like your father did by building you, and like you did for him. So that you wouldn't have to live with it, to atone for killing them, and him, and me. But you didn't have to kill me." If Zero died X would die too. The virus would make him die with Zero, so Dr. Light's creation would not survive his fall, and he wanted that. He didn't want to have outlived Zero again. "And now you can kill yourself."

It would hurt X if he did.

"I can't kill you because I can't bear the thought of you dying. And you want to die for doing all of this. And I want to die, for failing them, but I can't bear to hurt you at all, and that would hurt you." The thought of a lovers' suicide, more than one hunter had died in the process or after bringing down a loved one gone maverick, ran through X's head and he checked and saw that yes, if he wanted to self-destruct and take Zero with him he could. Although with backup stations that wouldn't make either of them stay dead. Zero could have the mavericks kill them before they were revived, but Zero didn't want to make his children have to kill him the way he had Wily and they were still X's children even if they were Zero's as well now. They didn't want to do that to X either, Zero let him see.

They were still themselves, in there, at least. They'd acted madder than they were to stay underestimated and to make it easier. If the Hunters had known that it was only one thing changed, that knowledge, and these were still their loved ones, if they couldn't say that they were already dead… Before they'd been informed that it was all a virus it had been so very, very hard.

Zero had let them know that for X's sake. Given away such a key piece of information… Even then, Zero had hated X's pain. Even then, he'd known how stupid it was to give something away to the enemy like that. How horrible it would be if one of the things he gave X let X win and made all the horrible things Zero had done have been for nothing. But he hadn't been able to stand seeing X hurt like that, and even if he still had to fight he'd had to do what he could to ease that pain. He'd had to, in the same way he'd had to end humanity for his father and his brothers and his future children even if he had to kill so many of them as well. The guilt really did hurt him, and X began to feel like a crybaby.

He felt guilty for failure, when he'd tried as hard as he could. Zero felt guilty for things he had actually done, and chosen to do, and agonized over, and had to watch, and remembered the names so they wouldn't be forgotten as the only immortality he could give them and…

Zero.

X reached up now, held Zero's head in his hands, and wanted so much to reach through the eyes that met his and fill Zero's heart as Zero had his. Wanted to soothe Zero's pain as Zero had his.

Zero might deserve that pain, humanity might deserve a quick end, but it was still not right, any of it, and he wanted to do anything he could, he wanted to do things he couldn't to make all of their pain and sadness and death stop. He wished he could do what Zero did.

"And to think a few hours ago you hated the virus."


	8. And Carry On

**Disclaimer: I don't own Rockman or any other intellectual property referenced here: Capcom and the other rightful owners/holders do. Please don't sue. Oh, and I also don't own the wonderful movie **_**Labyrinth**_**. **

**Aaand I finally update this! Tales of the Abyss has eaten my brain. Okay, now where was I…**

**And it's done! **

-

X had seen the virus as hate, destruction, and corruption, not as, as Zero. The virus he could hate. Zero he never could. He wanted to reach back, he couldn't help but want that.

"Yin and yang. X virus has a bit of a ring to it. You might be able to. Your system nanties are nowhere near the level of mine, but if I draw you in we might be able to pull it off, even though you're an android instead of an android master. You're a century old and you're X, after all." Zero wanted it to, trying to hide how much in the slightly false light tone.

Please.

Perhaps, if he could infect (he still hated that word) Zero back (he hated this…) he could do, do something? He knew Zero knew X was thinking of this, and still Zero worked carefully. X let him do as he willed. Why resist what they both wanted, for reasons both right and wrong? Just as X wished Zero would hold him like this forever, a traitor part of Zero wanted X to stop him. "They won't leave you on your own," Zero apologized, numbing the pain sensors on X's lip before biting there, where the altered nanites had gathered.

Oh, this was very odd.

"No more than that for now. It's a little hard to adjust to the first time. We didn't know what was wrong so Sigma brought me to Cain on the chance he'd do something helpful. I snapped out of it on my own, but by that point Cain had given me a cover identity and so I decided why let Sigma be the one to keep an eye on you?"

Zero was mostly babbling there: X didn't really note anything but Zero's voice at first. Oh, yes, there was an outside. It wasn't important to do anything there, though. Zero would keep him safe. Far better than Sigma.

Vast. Easy to get lost in, but then he already was lost. This was Zero, though.

"You're so trusting."

They'd kept saying that to him, various mavericks, and now he knew what they'd been hinting at. Of course he hadn't gotten it. Zero was Zero. How could he not trust him?

How to describe this, how to simplify this and put it in terms his mind could handle? Warm, warm, warm. Like a fireside, cooled by X''s presence, and he wondered at fate, that he froze and Zero burned apart. Opposites. Zero was feverish. Another human metaphor. Overheating, overstrained, and he was so worried. Now he knew how Zero had felt, watching X and wondering if he would break under the pressure.

Just like X had longed for Zero when Zero had revealed that they were enemies Zero longed for him. Wanted to know that X didn't hate him, that they wouldn't have to fight, and seeing this X truly couldn't blame Zero. He never had been able to. He should have tried to say that this was wrong, he should have rejected Zero, but he never could. Not rejecting him was one thing. Comforting him was another, and just like he'd broken when Zero had done things meant to comfort him Zero knew X loved him when despite everything X tried to comfort him back.

Zero almost wanted him to find a reason to hate or a means to attack, letting him explore all of his systems except for one area. _The children are there,_ Zero told him. _Can't have you getting lost in Alia or something._

_Are,_ "Are you implying that you were jealous of her? Is that why you said she was dangerous?" Maybe if X had someone to go to besides Zero… But Signas was Dr. Cain's last creation, X's youngest stepbrother, and he hadn't been able to distract X.

_I didn't want you to do to her what I did to Iris. She's back with her formerly ex-boyfriend, anyway, and you're too honorable to poach._

"I'm yours now," X told him, opening his eyes to see that Zero's were closed. He'd never seen Zero calm, not that he was inside. So many burned places that X couldn't soothe yet. "Take more."

"You're recovering quickly." Zero opened his eyes and met X's with a proud smile. He'd always been proud of X, they saw those memories, although he'd known he shouldn't be happy his enemy was strong and getting stronger.

"It's much easier with you than it would be with a stranger."

"Neither of us are fighting it," even though they should be, "and you already know what my self feels like, so there's no shock. You're still amazing."

X kissed him, only realizing afterwards what he was doing. This was his first kiss. It had half been, well, affection, and half that he wanted Zero to take more of his nanites from the patched-but-not-healed over place. Their lips lingered there for awhile, in shock, and X could tell that he wasn't the only one blushing before he blushed harder because he'd just checked Zero's readouts to see if he was blushing and that wasn't exactly…

Zero blushed harder and took a little more, thinking it might be too much too soon but this way the kiss could be ended without being any more awkward than it was and…

So much chaos and hurt and confusion, so much need for him. X realized that just as he couldn't push Zero out neither could Zero even though Zero was designed for this. As long as Zero loved him he couldn't take back the freedom within his systems, the control he'd given X.

How could X abuse that trust? Zero couldn't, and Zero had been created to.

Zero's ability to sense X and what he did was, once X found it, so much more acute than his own sense of Zero. Of course, Zero had been made for this. Oh, knowing he made him feel this way was almost too much. X's heartbreak, X's love…

The knowledge of what X should do, and a prayer… Zero. "You're mine," X told him. "I will never leave you, or even really want to, as long as you are mine and I am yours." Bound together like this, how could they separate themselves without dying? How could they want to kill the other?

_X_, was the answer, and an infinity in that name. "Love me, worship me, and I will be your slave."

It took a moment for X to make the connection. "I thought you hated that movie." He couldn't help but run his hands through Zero's hair, even knowing what was hidden there. His head in the lion's jaws, his hands in its mane, and if Zero wanted him dead he would be. If X wanted Zero dead he would be.

"It hit a little close to home."

"What do you mean?" It took another moment for X to realize why Zero had referenced that line of that movie.

"It was a little eerie. I was half wondering if it were a test or something."

"So I'm the young pure-hearted girl with an overactive fantasy life," the peace X wanted, Zero had thought, was always and ever only a fantasy. "Beloved by the goblin king, who is trying to rescue a child from being turned into one of his subjects."

"And in the end she rejects and destroys him. The peach was also a decent metaphor for the virus I wanted to offer you. Let me in, and you can have whatever you want, even a dream of peace, forever."

"He wasn't destroyed."

"He wasn't?"

"He's alive in the next part of the story, and the white owl that showed up at the end, after you left the room, was also him."

"I'd just seen myself killed by you. You know, we really are alike. Although I have better hair." Zero was trying to be Zero for his sake, the old habits of little comedic things to take the edge off.

"I love your hair." He always had, although he'd thought Zero wouldn't like it of X was overly familiar like this. It would have been awkward. He hadn't know if Zero had liked him that way, he hadn't known he'd liked Zero that way, and there had always been this sense of necessary distance…

"I hardly ever see yours." Zero reached out, permission asked and granted without words, and removed X's helmet. "You won't need armor or weapons anymore."

"It's been so long I feel naked without them."

"Well, you are naked under them. I'm going to get you some new clothes, it's been years since you've bought any and you gave away the t-shirts I gave you."

"Zero, they were offensive."

"That was what made them funny." Maverick hunters had to wear armor on duty and X never considered himself off duty. Zero just liked how his looked. Humans and their gender nonsense. Androids didn't have gender: he wasn't male or female so who cared which he looked like more?

No one would, now. X sighed.

"You do look a lot like Rock." Zero kept going, trying to recapture that almost-normalcy. "Well, his older brother. Your eyes are green, for one thing, and there are other things, but you were obviously made to be family." He realized he'd misstepped at the end, his voice trailing off.

"I do want to hear about them, but not now." Bringing up murdered family really wasn't going to help them forget what was happening.

"Sorry, I was just thinking of what you would look best in, and that led to thinking of how great you look, and who you look like… I don't know, green? Maybe aquamarine, nearer your body armor color, if you want to stay blue."

"I am utterly sick of blue. It is my signature color, or some nonsense like that, it turns me into a symbol, it reminds people of my legendary brother, and no one but you ever buys me anything that isn't that color. Whenever I went out wearing an outfit that wasn't blue, no one recognized me but you. It's wonderful for when I want to go off base without being mobbed, but I have a face, it's a nice one, and it's a little disheartening that all people see when they look at me is the symbol."

"X, why didn't you tell me you hated blue?"

"I don't hate it, I'm just sick of feeling like I have to wear it all the time. Whenever I asked anyone but you how I looked in something else they said it 'just wasn't me.' I _am_ me, I do not need a color to be me."

"Wow, you really needed to get that off your chest." His partner was half-amused, half-concerned, so very Zero and just like always.

"Yes, I am X, I do not gripe."

"Not in front of the ids, but what about me?"

"It never came up."

"X, seriously, that's what I'm here for." Among other things that they were refusing to think about. "So, green?"

"Yes, maybe bringing out my eyes will make people notice the color. I've seen them described as blue, I'm not kidding."

"I'm amazed you still have the same eyes. I've done blue, yellow, and I've got red ones for scaring the hell out of people with."

"Normal people have haircuts." Most reploid hair was 'grown' or constructed by nanite clusters in the scalp, and could be grown out and then cut into the desired shape. Some hunters didn't bother and just got helmets shaped to look like hair, like Alia.

"No one touches the hair. It's not ornamental. I've got monofilaments, shockers, and more sensors than you can shake a stick at in here, you know that." Among other things. "All that and a note from Cain, and there was still such a fight over letting me keep it when I joined… Sure, it can't fit into a standard helmet, but I come with a non-standard one."

"So it's okay because you can shock anyone who tries to grab it?" X had missed that part of the drama that came from a hunter-killer joining the hunters. But he did know that ornamental work that could be a handicap in combat went.

"And I can move it. Most of the strands don't have that capability but the ones that do move others by wrapping around them or hooking up to the backs. Very nice engineering."

"Why didn't you use that?"

"Because I liked having a secret weapon and I didn't want tentacle jokes."

"Oh. Is that why you didn't want a radio for the holidays that year?"

"Forget radio, I can pick up TV channels from the other side of the planet. Although I didn't let on quite how good it was. I caught the finale of Tesseract during the last inauguration."

"You were watching TV during that and you didn't hook me up?"

"I thought you'd make me pay attention."

"As though anyone could pay attention to her without wanting to be watching a slightly less fictional performance." X would not have said something like this about anyone to anyone but Zero, but Zero was the one he could say things like this to in the knowledge that it wouldn't go any further so he didn't have to worry about hurting people's feelings or ruining his image.

"Yeah. I mean, really. She talked about equality, but do you know how many willing converts I got because of the addendum to the Conley-Marsh Verification Act she pushed through until the courts overturned it? And to do it they had to invalidate the whole act! So we had sixteen months before reploids were covered by due process again while her party blocked any decent legislation. I really wish I'd thought of that, but it was all her. Humans. Suicidal, the lot of them."

Zero talking about how bad a strategic move something was had once been normal. Now that he wasn't hiding anymore… "Zero…" You spent so many years undercover and now you suddenly weld your foot into your mouth?

"Sorry. Before, it would have just been tasteless."

"Now it's…"

"Sadly true." An armored hand ruffled X's own hair.

"It's not that I don't want to face it, to understand everything, it's just too soon." Or even with Zero he might really break.

"What if you… What if I show you everything, we debate it rationally, and you still don't agree it was the right thing to do? That's what our mutual half-brother did."

"I think I would still love you even if it had been nothing but murder for the sake of convenience." Dealing with humans was hard, X had refused to believe it was impossible. But Zero believed it, and…

"We don't choose who we fall in love with." Zero, too, wished it had been someone else. Anyone else. He'd won, but he still could lose X, and…

"I've fallen for you." A very apt metaphor. The red demon had destroyed the world, for good this time, and all X could do was lie here and wait to see if Elysium would rise from the rubble of Armageddon.


End file.
